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baddaawg · Jan 31, 2009, 11:49 PM

hi all. i have an ibook g4 (1.07ghz. os x 10.4.11) and i am getting the blinking question mark folder when i start up the computer. i put in the os x disk that i have, started up with the os x disk and ran disk utilities on it and my internal hd is red under utilities and it says that smart status is failing. when i do "fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0s3" it runs and says "invalid b-tree node size (4, 0)." i got all these tricks from reading various website on the net, but don't know what to do now. is it gone, or can my hd be salvaged?

Cold Warrior · Jan 31, 2009, 11:56 PM

Your hard drive is dying. Use Firewire target disk mode and another Firewire-equipped Mac to try to mount the iBook's hard drive and back up what you can.

However you could try Disk Warrior. It may be able to repair your hard drive long enough for it to boot so you can recover data. Smart status indicates it is failing, which generally means the disk corruption will return.

Big Mac · Jan 31, 2009, 11:57 PM

The HD is failing and needs to be replaced, but you may be able to salvage files off of it with a product like Data Rescue II.

tooki · Feb 1, 2009, 07:04 AM

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

Your hard drive is dying. Use Firewire target disk mode and another Firewire-equipped Mac to try to mount the iBook's hard drive and back up what you can.

However you could try Disk Warrior. It may be able to repair your hard drive long enough for it to boot so you can recover data. Smart status indicates it is failing, which generally means the disk corruption will return.

DO NOT attempt a repair onto a failing drive!

Use FireWire Target Disk Mode to mount the drive on another Mac, and if necessary, use DiskWarrior's preview mode (which shows you the drive as if it were fixed, but without actually fixing it) to copy stuff off.

Then replace the drive. If SMART says it's failing, then it definitely is.

seanc · Feb 1, 2009, 07:59 AM

Definitely replace it if SMART has been tripped.

I've seen drives failing without tripping SMART - they're the worst because you have to guess.
Smartctl (unix app) is good for reading the values from the drive, but it requires knowledge of the command line.

I wish there was a good GUI SMART tool for OS X like SpeedFan for Windows.

baddaawg · Feb 1, 2009, 11:34 AM

is it possible to use an external drive on the laptop as the startup drive? in other words, can i buy an external drive, install os x on it, and use that instead of replacing the internal drive?

seanc · Feb 1, 2009, 11:37 AM

Yup, you can use a Firewire drive as a startup drive.

OreoCookie · Feb 1, 2009, 11:59 AM

Do not use your harddrive for anything but recovering your data!
You may want to invest $100 into Data Rescue: it doesn't attempt to repair anything, it only reads your data and tries to reconstruct. It is saved onto another harddrive.

baddaawg · Feb 1, 2009, 12:51 PM

so once i get the firewire drive and install os x on it, i have to select that drive as the startup drive once i restart the machine right, so it doesn't restart with the os x cd, yes?